floatingyeti

You're welcome! RM Nimbus is very obscure, I'm impressed. I love seeing more system uploads!

Thank you for sharing, this is great!

YES!!!

This looks amazing, thank you!

I just noticed you are including the database entry on your uploads.  That's really convenient! I hope others start doing that and it becomes the standard method.

I think you are using launchbox. I would not be able to troubleshoot that.

Have you downloaded Arcade (MAME Current) core in RetroArch?

Are you getting an error message when you try to launch a game? 

It might be easier to create one global emulator named RetroArch. It made things simpler for me. Unless you want a separate RetroArch folder for each system.

I might make instructional videos in the future. The entire process of making and uploading the setups is a lot of work and I was hoping to avoid the additional step of making video tutorials.

Were you able to get some of my uploads to work and then they all stopped working?

Did they never work for you?

Are you using spaces in any of the folder names? The path from your root directory to the roms folder can not have spaces.

What version of mame core are you using?

Load one of the games directly in RetroArch and upload a picture of your options setting.

Was changing the resolution to 1280x720p the solution?

Are you setting 7z to false in Rocketlauncher for each system?

Are you enabling CLI in RetroArch options?

Those are the three most common issues.

I can get everything launching in retroarch.

i dont want to explain everything yet, because i may go a completely different direction than Pipmick.

I need to seek out more games and test a few things.

I understand what he did and it works but I feel like I can learn more and possibly do better if I avoid this method.

There are many ways to go about this. His way might be best but I need sometime to determine that.

1 hour ago, brudibru said:

Floatingyeti, sorry to bother, I have a few questions:

1. Yes most of them. Some disks prompt me to format because they are unreadable. That must be my mistake using wrong machine, bios, or slot device.

2. Chd is not mandatory for most games. Some games boot without one and other games can boot to OS floppy image.

3. Yes, load os as needed and game 

Autosave on exit method works. I can launch directly to game.

It looks like macsefd model was used. Is that the best option? Can I expand the setup with a better model? I need to research.

I also remember playing (I think] Paratrooper and Bug Hunt. I will find those and make them run!

You can launch OS from floppy or use the mac_hdd chds.

It looks like pipmick was renaming the mac608 chd. I'm confused why he had to duplicate it and rename it for each game. I assume you could just have a single hdd chd with all the games installed. Must be necessary method with command line.

I need to consolidate everything to one common disk format and one hdd image.

I just quickly went through everything with Macintosh Plus.

Any issue I have right now is due to my limited knowledge of Macintosh models and operation.

I will deconstruct everything and recreate it with my usual insanity.

I need to finish another system project first.

Playing Grid Wars and Shuffle Puck was extremely nostalgic so I must have been using Macintosh as a young yeti.

thank you Sanchezmike I could run most of those disks. 

i was using macpro machine and it did not like some disks (prompted to format them because they were unreadable)

looks like they were using macsefd as well.  I just need to use the correct machine and slot device

Potentially I can get much more than those 19 games to work.

the MAME Mac software list select is garbage. I don't know why there wasn't more effort taken to gather working disk images because the machine has a status of 100% support.  And it supports almost every disk format.

This is a chaotic mess! I'm going to gather more games and see how far I can expand this.

I'm not sure if we need any of the chd hdd images at this point.

I got all the mac_flop software list games running

Machine: macsefd    Macintosh SE (FDHD)

Airborne!: boots and can use autosave/read-only method

Beyond Dark Castle: boots and can use autosave/read-only method

Balance of the Planets: I modified the zip to also have system software sys608.  Modified hash to load sys608 and bot disk 1.  launched BOT from file and created autosave

Lode Runner: Bad Dump

Super Cars: just a utility disk and not a game

Attempted mac_hdflop

Machine: maciisi    Macintosh IIsi (has a built in HDD)

can't read Macintosh High Density Disks with slot device 35dd (Apple/Sony 3.5" HD Superdrive)

I need to know which of the supported machines uses a compatible slot device to read mac_hdflop romset

If I'm given more mac_flop slot 35dd compatible disks I can add them to hash.  At this point I succeed at running the entire list of mac_flop software games but it doesnt seem worthwhile to make a setup.  Get me more games and I will continue.

The first step (before testing in MAME) would be to identify what Macintosh model each game is compatible with or at the very least the most universally compatible macintosh machine.

Any game compatible with MAME can be added to the hash file as long as you give the zip files lowercase names without spaces.

If a game requires use of a dsk and chd file, they can both be added to a single game entry in the hash.

An example from the fmtons_cd.xml I worked on:

<software name="kiwame2">

<description>Kiwame II</description>
        <year>1994</year>
        <publisher>ログ (Log)</publisher>
        <info name="serial" value="HMF-158 / MTC-1094"/>
        <info name="alt_title" value="極II" />
        <info name="release" value="199406xx" />
        <info name="usage" value="Requires 2 MB RAM"/>
        <part name="flop1" interface="floppy_3_5">
            <feature name="part_id" value="User Disk" />
            <dataarea name="flop" size="1261568">
                <rom name="Kiwame II.hdm" size="1261568" crc="1095e60c" sha1="a4f27fedb0d4c5b1aeaf39bbf2fbbd104c40760b" offset="000000" />
            </dataarea>
        </part>
        <part name="cdrom" interface="fmt_cdrom">
            <diskarea name="cdrom">
                <disk name="kiwame ii (japan)" sha1="5ade123de0cd29a24779ae3a5c04afbc37d2280a" />
            </diskarea>
        </part>
    </software>

Mame knows what hash to use depending on the directory name "fmtowns" as long as there is a "fmtowns.zip" bios file in that directory it will attempt to launch any game on the "fmtowns_cd.xml" hash.

Game name is "kiwame2.zip" which is an empty zip file. This tells mame to look for a directory of the same name within "fmtowns" directory.

Within kiwame folder is a User Disk (.HDM) and the game disc (CHD). The hash entry identifies both files and loads them into the specified slots devices.

This process is using relative paths and is command line free.

Macintosh would use a similar process.  To make things easier you could create a .ini file with one of the mac_hdd CHD images permanently loaded (not sure slot device).  Then the mac_flop.xml and mac_hdflop.xml would load the floppy disks because the chd is already loaded.

BUT...There are so many machines to test.  Each game may require a different one.

mac128k    Macintosh 128k
mac2fdhd    Macintosh II (FDHD)
mac512k    Macintosh 512k
mac512ke    Macintosh 512ke
maccclas    Macintosh Color Classic
macclas2    Macintosh Classic II
macclasc    Macintosh Classic
macii    Macintosh II
maciici    Macintosh IIci
maciicx    Macintosh IIcx
maciifx    Macintosh IIfx
maciihmu    Macintosh II (w/o 68851 MMU)
maciisi    Macintosh IIsi
maciivi    Macintosh IIvi
maciivx    Macintosh IIvx
maciix    Macintosh IIx
maclc    Macintosh LC
maclc2    Macintosh LC II
maclc3    Macintosh LC III
maclc520    Macintosh LC 520
macpb100    Macintosh PowerBook 100
macpb140    Macintosh PowerBook 140
macpb145    Macintosh PowerBook 145
macpb145b    Macintosh PowerBook 145B
macpb160    Macintosh PowerBook 160
macpb170    Macintosh PowerBook 170
macpb180    Macintosh PowerBook 180
macpb180c    Macintosh PowerBook 180c
macpd210    Macintosh PowerBook Duo 210
macplus    Macintosh Plus
macprtb    Macintosh Portable
macqd700    Macintosh Quadra 700
macse    Macintosh SE
macse30    Macintosh SE/30
macsefd    Macintosh SE (FDHD)
pmac6100    Power Macintosh 6100/60
unitron    Mac 512
utrn1024    Unitron 1024

Here is my guide to setup any of my uploads: How to add Systems for RetroArch(MAME)

If you recently updated to MAME core 0.247 switch your resolution to 1280x720p in MAME RetroArch options.  For some reason most of the MAME software systems now crash at 1080p.

For what I can see of your module it looks correct.

39 minutes ago, sanchezmike01 said:

can u post 1 ini sample

To enable autoload states, just set autoload state = "true" in your retroarch.cfg or your individual core cfg.

For the autosave on exit method with ini, I wrote instructions on my recent Tesla Ondra upload in description.

Your themes are good. Keep going! Almost every system theme has been made/remade multiple times. If you didn't make your theme, no one else would make any media for Apple I.  You enable people to create more media by eliminating the difficulty of setting up the system in MAME. That is what's important!

Save States:

You just edit the file extension of a standard save state.

example: awesome_game.state1 -> awesome_game.state.auto

the auto save on exit method can work but I create an .ini file for the system to avoid all the systems using that method.  And you can set the file to "read-only" in properties to keep it locked on to the same moment every time.

I attached the states

note: I had to change the game: bowling to appbowling so it didn't conflict with an existing save from another system. You can change it back.

states.zip

Its working great!

I just had to add the ".auto" to the end of the save states.  Do they work for you with just ".save" extension?  Maybe I can learn something new.

Making the videos include the bezel is an interesting shortcut to eliminate the Video border in the theme.

You had two main wheels and I didn't want to choose so I combined them.

I made a minor adjustment to the default theme.  It is still using all the same images.  I tried to correct the video dimensions and avoid the overlap with the wheels.

Keep up the good work!  It was so nice to quickly add a system!

default.zip

I was thinking about Macintosh but I looked at the very small list of games and it seems like it would be better to wait.  I know there is a much bigger library of games than what is listed.  I think it's still in the preliminary stage.

Thank you!

I will definitely install this today.  This is very impressive for a first-time complete system upload, this is not an easy system!

Download the complete setup, it's ready to GO! 

This is an interesting idea! Hyperspin setups in arcade cabinets sometimes require using standard controllers for systems that can't be mapped to the arcade panel.

At that point you are using the cabinet like a kiosk. A series of kiosk themes would be  a more  authentic representation of the system and interaction with the game.

This is great, thank you!

You're welcome. It's too bad that cassette games aren't working correctly but it's still a step forward for cart games.